# Ecumenopolis by Joshua Bagley

## An architecture of accumulated decisions

Ecumenopolis fills its square with a city whose buildings obey recognizable conventions and then bend away from them. Faces carry stripes and small rectangular subdivisions. Roofs and side walls establish volume. Towers taper, swell, lean or abruptly change direction. Some views are so crowded that the city becomes an almost continuous pattern; others expose broad bands of ground between groups of structures.[^S13][^S15][^S17]

Joshua Bagley's series belongs to Art Blocks Playground. The official collection identifies 676 artworks and July 28, 2021 as its release date. Its description frames the project around exploration and discovery in unfamiliar worlds.[^S02] These are imagined cityscapes, not mapped reconstructions of a named place. The [artist dossier](https://ab5d.xyz/artists/joshua-bagley/) supplies broader context for Bagley's practice, while this essay follows the specific relation between placement, building form and surface pattern.

The city's plausibility comes from repeated visual agreements. Similar edges imply a shared viewpoint; related patterns suggest floors, windows and cladding. Yet the deformations refuse the stability expected of actual construction. This is not a scene in which a few impossible buildings interrupt an otherwise normal town. The entire architectural language is available for variation, making the viewer learn the local rules of each image.

## Rules with architectural names

Bagley's own account places his entry into programming in late summer 2020, beginning with Python cellular automata before moving into Processing. He describes a background in physics and aerospace engineering and an interest in the exploratory problem-solving of code. Biology and nature are recurring sources of inspiration in that account.[^S04] Those statements help explain an experimental practice, but they do not prove that Ecumenopolis simulates biological growth or follows a particular engineering model.

The artist's feature guide gives more precise access to this series. It distinguishes the placement of buildings, called Blueprint, from their surface subdivision, called Architect, and their color ordering, called Painter. A single painter retains the same palette order; multiple painters shuffle it between buildings. A single architect repeats a pattern, while multiple architects vary it. Bagley explicitly identifies the combination of one painter and one architect as a favorite.[^S05]

The guide also separates bending strength from bending style, and changes in thickness from their direction. These distinctions matter because the city can be coherent in one respect and irregular in another. A repeated facade can wrap a crooked tower; a straight tower can carry a complicated patchwork. Variation is distributed among different decisions rather than concentrated in a single distortion.

Bagley notes that the Wind bending mode consistently leans left, an unintended behavior whose cause he had not resolved in that account.[^S05] Retaining that admission is more useful than inventing a perfectly controlled development narrative. The work's published documentation exposes both deliberate options and an observed surprise. No dated sequence of prototypes was recovered to establish precisely when the modes were added or how they were revised.

## Subdivision becomes a city

The complete indexed artist program contains 8,596 UTF-8 bytes and uses p5@1.0.0. The exact script was retrieved, read in full and hashed, with the returned contract and project number checked against the assignment. This inspection used the official index; it was not a direct chain extraction pinned to a historical block.[^S01]

Four eight-character hexadecimal portions from the first half of the token hash initialize four unsigned integers. A shift-and-XOR generator updates this state to supply repeatable choices. The first seed value also initializes p5 noise. A short acknowledgment in the script credits Piter Pasma beside the random generator, but it does not establish a separate licence for that contribution.[^S01]

The script establishes a nominal thousand-unit coordinate system and scales it to a square browser canvas. It chooses palette behavior, fog strength, bending, width changes, segment size, segment count and stacking. Some palettes are explicit lists; others are interpolated gradients. Color order can remain stable or be shuffled between buildings. The choices are made before and during construction, so the final token combines a shared environment with individual architectural variation.[^S01]

Recursive subdivision is central to both the ground and the facades. A four-sided region is split in alternating directions. Rules decide whether to continue subdividing one half or both, with depth and size limits. Ground regions are filtered to identify usable building sites, then sorted by position so that later drawing can cover earlier structures. This creates a legible overlap order without requiring a three-dimensional scene graph.[^S01]

A building is assembled from a sequence of quadrilateral cross-sections. Their positions, orientation and width can change as the sequence advances, producing straight, leaning, tapered or kinked structures. The program connects successive sections into front and side faces, records edges, and can place smaller structures on top. The faces are themselves subdivided into colored patches. Different brightness multipliers distinguish sides and roofs, while outlines help separate adjacent planes.[^S01]

Atmospheric depth is created by blending colors toward the background according to a building's position. Thus a distant structure can retain its geometric pattern while losing contrast. This is distinct from making every building smaller through conventional perspective. The scene's spatial effect comes from several cooperating devices: overlap order, projected faces, size choices and the color blend.[^S01]

Rendering is finite. The program prepares an offscreen graphics buffer, processes up to twenty-five building entries per draw cycle, then copies the completed image to the visible canvas and calls noLoop. In the original renderer, edition one initially appeared blank before its completed city arrived. The held work remained unchanged across later observations. No pointer or keyboard handlers, audio calls or external image loads appear in the artist script. Its drawn buildings may look as though they are bending, but they are not continuously moving.[^S01][^S14][^S17]

## The announcement and the actual sequence

The fresh index records 676 minted works and a maximum of 676. On July 28, 2021, its first token timestamp is 00:47:37 UTC, activation is 02:48:30 UTC, and completion is 19:01:11 UTC. These are distinct events despite sharing a calendar date.[^S01]

A contemporary Paradigma bulletin dated July 28 lists Ecumenopolis for 16:00 BRT, at 0.15 ETH, with 675 units. That is a published contemporary report, not the artist's original announcement. Its count differs from the current 676-token record. One possible explanation is that it excludes the earlier token, but the available evidence does not establish that allocation policy.[^S06]

All 676 indexed mint records were inspected. Edition one was minted at 17:45:12 UTC, with the final edition at 19:01:11 UTC: a span of 75 minutes and 59 seconds. There were already 234 recorded tokens before 19:00 UTC, the UTC equivalent of the bulletin's 16:00 BRT time. The reported schedule therefore cannot be treated as the first moment minting occurred, and the final timestamp does not justify an unqualified claim of a seventy-one-second public sellout.[^S01][^S06]

The transaction pages for editions one and 675 each identify a single minted token and a transaction value of 0.15 ETH. Network fees are separate. These two observations corroborate the reported price at sampled points but do not audit every purchase or prove the complete pricing mechanism.[^S09][^S10]

The official description promised ten percent of minting profits to the National Alliance to End Homelessness; Bagley's current project page reports that donation as completed. The change in tense is preserved as artist reporting, not converted into independently verified receipt evidence.[^S02][^S03] Original cap-setting history, allocation categories and the discrepancy between schedule and earlier transactions remain open.

## A licence family without a version

The current project record reports CC BY-NC-SA and gives no licence link or version. The label identifies Attribution, NonCommercial and ShareAlike, but it does not establish which version's precise terms govern. This package retains the reported label rather than silently adding 4.0.[^S01]

The official Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 legal code was inspected as a relevant candidate. It allows noncommercial sharing and adaptation subject to attribution and other conditions, and places ShareAlike requirements on distributed adaptations. Those are the terms of that inspected version, not proof that the artist adopted it for Ecumenopolis. The missing version remains unresolved.[^S07]

The full script has no separate artist software licence notice. The p5.js 1.0.0 dependency uses the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1, which does not settle permission for Bagley's program or the credited random-generator contribution.[^S01][^S08]

Edition 590 is freshly verified as held by an AB5D-linked wallet, and both its original renderer and official preview were viewed. Ownership establishes that collection connection, not a copyright grant. The header preserves the artist, edition, canonical token and unresolved licence status. The unchanged official preview is presented with attribution for noncommercial criticism; the reported label is retained without asserting a particular licence version. The essay's CC0-1.0 dedication covers only its original prose.[^S17][^S18]

## Density, distance and deformation

The five works were selected from four early discovery candidates and a verified AB5D holding. Each identity was retrieved on Ethereum contract 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, and each original output was actually viewed. The selection demonstrates possibilities rather than their prevalence across the collection.

[Edition zero](https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000000), token 119000000, is saturated with pink and magenta. Broad towers lean together, their horizontal stripes interrupted by narrow side faces and smaller divisions. The restricted color range makes the shared direction of the buildings especially prominent: the eye follows repeated sloping edges before separating individual structures. Small openings onto the pink ground relieve the density without creating a clear horizon. The city seems to extend beyond every edge, while its repeated bands turn the whole square into a tilted architectural fabric.[^S13]

[Edition one](https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000001), token 119000001, substitutes a densely varied palette of yellow, green, teal, orange and dark purple. Thin towers, long vertical strips and rectangular patches compete throughout the square. Some facades carry horizontal bands while neighboring ones emphasize vertical lines. That conflict makes buildings alternately stand forward as volumes and flatten into a mosaic. Unlike edition zero, color does not unify the structures into one atmospheric field. It continually redirects attention between them, making the dense city readable as many local arrangements rather than one dominant sweep.[^S14]

[Edition ten](https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000010), token 119000010, opens broad green spaces between groups of relatively small buildings. Diagonal ground bands and repeated clusters create depth, reinforced by the distant structures fading toward green. The frontmost buildings retain contrasting yellow, teal and purple details. Here the atmosphere is not simply an overall tint: its changing strength lets the viewer distinguish near and far areas within the same patterned world.[^S15]

[Edition twenty](https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000020), token 119000020, uses coral, teal, cream and dark brown. Large open strips divide clusters, and isolated buildings punctuate the middle distance. The facades remain busy, but the unoccupied ground gives the eye a route through the composition. Some structures widen toward their tops, others narrow into short spires. Their shared palette makes those changes of silhouette easier to compare than in edition one's crowded multicolor field.[^S16]

[Edition 590](https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000590), token 119000590, is the header. Tall red, cream and purple structures rise through an arrangement crossed by pale diagonal gaps. Several thin towers abruptly bend, while thicker neighbors remain almost upright. Repeated narrow stripes emphasize these changes in direction, making the deformations seem structural rather than merely decorative. A muted background preserves depth behind the sharp foreground. Its current indexed owner, 0xdd19308a9731cdecb67e0d80ca6823394208c045, matches the freshly checked AB5D linked-wallet profile.[^S17][^S18]

## A city available for inspection

Ecumenopolis makes a city from related acts of division. The ground is partitioned into sites, buildings into sections, and faces into smaller colored regions. That continuity connects the overall composition to its smallest visible marks. The same procedure can produce a crowded wall of architecture or widely separated neighborhoods, allowing the series to change scale without abandoning its visual grammar.

The artist provides an out-of-band generator whose documented controls create new random outputs and accept a specific hash. That exploratory interface is separate from the original token script, and its controls should not be attributed to the minted work. Bagley's print page also offers one signed print per Dreams or Ecumenopolis NFT, giving the completed static image another presentation context.[^S11][^S12]

Unresolved research questions:

- Which original announcement and configuration records explain the reported 675 units versus the final 676?
- What accounts for the many mints before the contemporary reported opening time?
- What were the allocations of the early tokens, and did pricing change between the sampled transactions?
- Which licence version applies, and what separate permissions cover the artist code and credited generator?
- What receipt evidence corroborates the reported charitable donation?
- What dated prototypes document the development of the bending and subdivision modes?

[^S01]: Art Blocks. [Ecumenopolis indexed project, complete script and mint chronology](https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S02]: Joshua Bagley / Art Blocks. [Ecumenopolis collection](https://www.artblocks.io/collection/ecumenopolis-by-joshua-bagley). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S03]: Joshua Bagley. [Ecumenopolis artist project page](https://joshua-bagley.com/ecumenopolis/). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S04]: Joshua Bagley. [About](https://joshua-bagley.com/about/). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S05]: Joshua Bagley. [Ecumenopolis Features](https://joshua-bagley.com/ecumenopolis-features/). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S06]: Paradigma Education. [Boletim: Método Pra Tirar O Melhor da Temporada dos JPEGs](https://paradigma.education/blog/boletim-metodo-pra-tirar-o-melhor-da-temporada-dos-jpegs/). Published 2021-07-28. Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S07]: Creative Commons. [Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International legal code](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode.en). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S08]: p5.js contributors / Free Software Foundation. [p5.js 1.0.0 licence](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/processing/p5.js/1.0.0/license.txt). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S09]: Ethereum transaction / Etherscan. [Ecumenopolis edition 1 mint transaction](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x99f7b3a3041f03fd251e6a34c5330aa0e0e077ad269989cadc548a30050ac462). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S10]: Ethereum transaction / Etherscan. [Ecumenopolis edition 675 mint transaction](https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb63303283359170ea745d93fea5b8278d8ef3658a35b97511b8e866ff412e8e9). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S11]: Joshua Bagley. [Ecumenopolis out of band](https://joshua-bagley.com/ecumenopolis-out-of-band/). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S12]: Joshua Bagley. [Prints](https://joshua-bagley.com/prints/). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S13]: Joshua Bagley / Art Blocks. [Ecumenopolis #0 original](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000000). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S14]: Joshua Bagley / Art Blocks. [Ecumenopolis #1 original](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000001). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S15]: Joshua Bagley / Art Blocks. [Ecumenopolis #10 original](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000010). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S16]: Joshua Bagley / Art Blocks. [Ecumenopolis #20 original](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000020). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S17]: Joshua Bagley / Art Blocks. [Ecumenopolis #590 original](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000590). Accessed 2026-09-17.
[^S18]: Art Blocks. [AB5D linked collector wallets](https://www.artblocks.io/profile/ab5d). Accessed 2026-09-17.